Court confirms Joko Widodo as Indonesia's next president as police stop Prabowo supporters

Jakarta: Indonesia's next president will certainly be Joko Widodo after the country's Constitutional Court made a "final and binding" decision that comprehensively rejected the appeal mounted by his rival, Prabowo Subianto.

"The panel of judges wholly rejects the suit lodged by the applicant," said presiding judge Hamdan Zoelva at shortly before 9pm local time (midnight AEST).

The decision confirms the July 22 declaration of the vote by the Electoral Commission that the Jakarta governor, a political cleanskin untainted by the New Order regime of former dictator Suharto, won the presidency with about 53 per cent of the vote.

He will be sworn in as Indonesia's president on October 20, replacing Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The court's decision came despite attempts during the day by several thousand supporters of former army strongman Mr Prabowo to apply pressure from the streets.

As the nine judges began reading their verdict mid-afternoon, the protesters, many dressed in paramilitary-style uniforms, tried to use a truck to break a line of riot police summoned to protect the court. They were repelled when police fired tear gas and water cannon just hundreds of metres from the court building.

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After the decision, Mr Joko thanked the court for the decision, saying it gave them "the chance to work on the preparation for the next government."

Mr Prabowo made no statement but a campaign spokesman, Tantowi Yahya held to the view that the election was "marked by … massive fraud".

Complaints about the electoral roll were outside the purview of the court, they found; the widespread use of identity cards to vote rather than the official voter registration was legal and there was no evidence that the system was used by either party to its advantage; allegations of fraud, bribery and mismanagement by the Electoral Commission were also unproven, the court found.

Mr Prabowo will now take his fight for power into the nation's parliament, using what he calls his "permanent coalition", which controls 63 per cent of the parliamentary numbers, to try to block every law Mr Joko proposes.

"We will not let the country be controlled by a handful of people," Mr Tantowi said. "The people through the representative institutions such as [parliament] will continue to watch the government and it will play the balancing role."

Prabowo allies also intend to institute a special parliamentary inquiry to go through the evidence provided to the Constitutional Court in order to attack the Electoral Commission.

However, most analysts believe these efforts will amount to little and that Mr Prabowo's parliamentary coalition will quickly fragment.

Much of the former army strongman's political support in the community has already disappeared, according to reliable polls, which show people want him to quit and move on. Even many of the protestors on the streets seemed luke-warm in their support for the presidential candidate on Thursday and, when police ordered them home at sunset, they left quietly.

Mr Prabowo's legal appeal was, from the start, thin and ill-prepared, with lawyers and witness failing to prove, as required by Indonesian law, that "systematic, structured and massive" vote shifting had taken place.

Where voting patterns did seem suspicious, it was ambiguous who might have benefited, and involved relatively small numbers of votes — nowhere near the 8.4 million vote margin in favour of Mr Joko.

Numerous examples of fraud and intimidation fell over under examination. The judges criticised Mr Prabowo's witnesses for failing to have first-hand knowledge of events. One was scolded because his evidence was that he had read it in a newspaper.

One example of alleged intimidation raised by Mr Prabowo in a personal statement to the court was emblematic of much of the case. He told the court of a case in the village of Banyuwangi, East Java, where, "the house of our witness was burned down".

Online media portal Detik.com sent a journalist to check the claim, but found that, first, it was not the witness's house that was attacked, it was the Prabowo-Hatta campaign office, and second, that it was not set on fire, but someone threw stones at it.

Police told the journalist that the office was not specifically targeted, but some people had being throwing stones that day at a number of neighbouring houses. It had nothing to do with the election, but was purely a criminal incident, the police said.